Wole Soyinka: Literature, Activism, and African Transformation

Bola Dauda is a retired scholar based in the UK who currently serves as Executive Director of the Pan-African University Press. He is co-author, with Toyin Falola, of Representative Bureaucracy, Meritocracy, and Nation-Building in Nigeria (2015), Decolonizing Nigeria 1945-1960 (2017), and Nigerian Bureaucracy in an African Democracy (2017), among other publications.Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair Professor in the Humanities and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of Texas at Austin, USA. His publications include A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt: An African Memoir (2004), Counting the Tiger’s Teeth: A Memoir (2014), and In Praise of Greatness: The Poetics of African Adulation (2019).

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsPrefacePART 1: INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT1. Studies on Wole Soyinka 2. Wole Soyinka in Historical Perspective PART 2: HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND3. Abeokuta: The City of Innovations and Creativity4. Collective Traditions, Childhood, and Rites of Passage 5. Nobel Laureate: Literary Scholarship and Nation-building6. Relationships, Beliefs, and ValuesPART 3: LITERARY WORKS 7. Soyinka's Novels8. Dramatic Oeuvre9. Soyinka's Poetry10. The Politics of Soyinka’s Literature PART 4: LEGACIES AND CONCLUSION11. Soyinka’s Contribution to Literature12. Soyinka’s Literary Achievements and the Use of Language13. Conclusion: Will Soyinka’s Works Outlive Him?BibliographyIndex

This book is without any doubt well researched and offer very useful insight into the works and the environments that contributed to making Soyinka what he is today. The duo of Dauda and Falola have through this effort added their own to the body of rich and well-documented works that have come out to interpret Soyinka to his readers and make his work more accessible and understandable ... [T]he duo has contributed in no small way to advancing the frontiers of knowledge and understanding of Soyinka’s complex world. It is a book that should adorn bookshelves of libraries and institutions where serious intellectual work is done. Kudos to Dauda and Falola for this.